David Boring - Hardcover

Clowes, Daniel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375406921 ISBN 13: 9780375406928

Publisher: Pantheon, 2000

Synopsis

Meet David Boring: a nineteen-year-old security guard with a tortured innner life and an obsessive nature. When he meets the girl of his dreams, things begin to go awry: what seems too good to be true apparently is. And what seems truest in Boring's life is that, given the right set of circumstances (in this case, an orgiastic cascade of vengeance, humiliation and murder) the primal nature of humandkind will come inexorably to the fore.

"Boring finds love with a mysterious woman named Wanda, loses her and sort of finds her again. He also gets shot in the head (twice) and stranded on an island with his brutish family. Meanwhile, the world may or may not be ending soon. And did I mention that much of this is hilariously funny?" -- Time

About this title

About the Author

Daniel Clowes was born in Chicago in 1961. He is the creator of the comic book Eight-Ball, twenty-one issues of which have been published to date. His work has appeared in Esquire, The New Yorker, Vogue, Time, and Newsweek, among others. A feature film based on his 1998 book, Ghost World, starring Thora Birch, will be released in 2001 by MGM. He lives a childless, petless life in California with his beloved wife.

From the Inside Flap

Meet David Boring: a nineteen-year-old security guard with a tortured innner life and an obsessive nature. When he meets the girl of his dreams, things begin to go awry: what seems too good to be true apparently is. And what seems truest in Boring's life is that, given the right set of circumstances (in this case, an orgiastic cascade of vengeance, humiliation and murder) the primal nature of humandkind will come inexorably to the fore.<br><br>"Boring finds love with a mysterious woman named Wanda, loses her and sort of finds her again. He also gets shot in the head (twice) and stranded on an island with his brutish family. Meanwhile, the world may or may not be ending soon. And did I mention that much of this is hilariously funny?" -- <i>Time</i>

Reviews

Critically lauded comics artist Clowes follows up his masterful Ghost World with this sometimes enticing, sometimes baffling, graphic novel about a postadolescent antihero. David Boring is one of Clowes's signature typesAaffectless, indifferent to his future and disdaining the small town he left behind. He shares an apartment in "the city" with Dot, a wisecracking lesbian friend, to whom he recounts his passionless, fetishistic sexual conquests; he falls in love with Wanda, a girl who's just his type, only to have her vanish. When Boring's visiting hometown acquaintance is murdered, he becomes the main suspect. Then Boring himself is shot in the head. Convalescing on the resort island where he spent part of his youth, Boring and the other vacationers find themselves stuck there indefinitely after terrorists' germ weapons render the mainland U.S. uninhabitable. One subplot concerns the Yellow Streak, a superhero comic that Boring's father drew long ago; another concerns the Eerie Boy, who keeps invading our antihero's dreams. Clowes (Eightball) alternates moving scenes of personal alienation and despair with bizarre transitions, portentous plot twists and an unconvincing mix'n'match of genres. Clowes's faux-na?f drawing style is as effective as ever, and his fans will certainly enjoy it. The same fans may feel the ambitious narrative tries to do too many things at once. This is, however, serious and innovative work; and it's never boring. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Clowes' protagonists are generally jaded young cynics, and Boring 's eponymous hero is appropriately and ironically named. Outwardly passive, ennui-deadened David is a figure to whom extraordinary things happen as he obsessively pursues oddly coifed Wanda, his mysterious ideal woman. In that pursuit, he is shot twice, hides out on an isolated island surrounded by an eccentric family, and gets involved in a murder case before the story approaches a possibly apocalyptic conclusion. David's problems stem from an absent father, a hack comic-book artist whose only legacy is yellowed panels from his stories. Stark, confusing, rather off-putting, Clowes' new book is also intense, poetic, and intriguing, which is precisely what Clowes intends it to be, given his preference for sparse dialogue, ironic first-person narration, and deadpan illustration. Not as accessible and convincing as Clowes' Ghost World (1997), Boring is still an impressive slice of graphic surrealism. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375406921
• ISBN 13: 9780375406928
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 136